798 TRANSACTIONS OF SUB-SECTION F. 



or later, if the balauce of trade in this human traffic he not adjusted, the raw 

 material, out of which urban society is made, will be seriously deteriorated ; and 

 the national degeneracy will be properly charged against those who failed to 

 foresee the evil and treat the cause.' 



Since these words were written the impression they reflect has been deepening 

 in many minds, and the problem of rural life seems to be more than ever clamant 

 for solution. The city, in the pride of its conscious fascinations, captures in- 

 creasingly the best element of the country for its service, and this determination 

 of blood to the head becomes more and more a threatening symptom in our 

 national life. The consultant physicians are still the big men of the towns ; some 

 of them, it is true, are prescribing urbs in rure in place of the older ideal, rus in 

 wbe. We hear much— we even see something — of the Garden City, but for any 

 broad and philosophic treatment of the economic and social conditions of the 

 open country we have still to wait, 



Public Interest in Rural Life. 



Although our problem has not yet received the proper attention at the hands of 

 the sciences, its urgency is growing in the public mind and stirring the centres of 

 government. If the British Association were to take action upon my appeal, 

 they would be respondmg to the call of an awakened civic conscience. Physical 

 degeneracy and the harassing prospect of unemployment in the towns — a prospect 

 that soon every nation will have a huge derelict population, not merely unem- 

 ployed but imemployable — have forced the problem of rural life over the 

 threshold — aye, into the very forefront of practical politics. 



The King's Speech at the opening of the present Parliament foreshadowed 

 legislation ' by which a larger number of the population may be attracted to and 

 retained on the land,' and measures framed upon an interesting diversity of 

 principle have marked the stage of economic thought reached by our public life. 

 Already President Roosevelt had, in more than one Annual Message to Congress, 

 urged the necessity of improving, by every available means, the condition of that 

 section (estimated by him to be nearly one half) of the population who ' devote 

 their energies to growing things from the soil.' Nor has the great advocate and 

 exponent of the strenuous life been content to wait until the play of political 

 forces had produced a situation where the national problem he was determined to 

 elucidate could be treated on its merits. \\'ithin the last month he has appointed 

 a small Commission combining ideally in its five members the sciences most closely 

 related to agriculture, rural education, the organisation of voluntary effort in social 

 service, the highest kind of economic journalism, and that rare quality of admini- 

 strative capacity that understands the limits of the respective spheres of State 

 assistance and private initiative in practical affairs. The Commission are to survey 

 the whole field of rural social economy ; to review the existing agencies, voluntary 

 and official, available for its betterment ; and to suggest what action may legiti- 

 mately be taken by the Government for the co-ordination of their several activities. 

 They are to report to the President in time to enable him, while in office, to send 

 a Special Message to Congress. If President Roosevelt adds to his stupendous 

 policy for the conservation of the uatui-al resources of the United States a scheme 

 for developing those latent resources which it is the highest statesmanship to 

 discover in the mind and character of the society of his day, it will be a fit ending 

 to a great administration. 



The real significance of this new departure — the definite governmental recogni- 

 tion that rural progress is a matter of national concern — is to be found in the circum- 

 stances of the country to which it relates. My own studies of the problem have 

 been made chiefly in Ireland, Great Britain, and North America. To us Irish the 

 problem is obviously one of paramount importance : its neglect means national 

 decay. In Great Britain, although the neglect may be more easily explained and 

 excused, it should, in my judgment, now be repaired. But in the United States, 

 where, speaking generally, there is neither agricultural depression nor rural 

 depopulation, it is doubtful whether any less far-seeing statesman than President 



